Carl-Richard

I used to think I squandered my potential as a professional musician, and that I really wanted all the fame and fortune that comes with that. I felt a lot of shame around it, and I've thought about how weird that was, because I've always thought that becoming a professional musician is not really something you aim for, so from a rational perspective, it shouldn't have bothered me this much. Then I really thought about it, and I concluded that it was not really about squandering my professional success, but rather my own spiritual success of mastering the instrument, which in a sense is even more heart-wrenching. It all boils down the day I made the stupid decision that "practice is ego" (which in fact was an egoic defense mechanism), and I consciously made myself believe that I shouldn't care about becoming a better player. I didn't realize that mastery is fundamentally what spirituality is about, and that consciously denying it was just a really crude form of spiritual bypassing. Oh well, we all have to learn these things in some way or another

Definitions are something you think up. You don't have to do a comprehensive swoop of your experience to construct one. You can just put a stake in the sand and say "this is what a woman is". This is in fact what you always have to do at some point, and it will never be perfect. Anyways, if gender is this strongly tied to experience, what is not an experience of gender? Isn't there a danger of the concept losing its meaning?

You could almost say the art of chess is to win.

@Michael569 @Flowerfaeiry Wow, side by side, you literally have the same profile picture

True. There are like 8 common definitions of man/woman and infinite genders. Why does "usually" matter? For example, you could think that you saw a plastic bag in the dark when it was in fact a rock, and even if you usually make that mistake, that does not make the rock a plastic bag. All you have to do is wait until sunrise (i.e. move from the public place to the bedroom) and that mistake becomes very clear. This goes back to practicality and context. You also don't have to take DNA samples to know that chromosomes are an accurate reflection of your experience of gender. Again, If I'm with a trans woman in the bedroom, I will quickly experience why I think that chromosomes have something to do with gender.

If I were to observe a passing trans person in public, I would probably think they're a woman. If I were to observe a passing trans person in the bedroom, I would not think they're a woman. However, whether I think somebody is a woman due to missing information, practicality and context, does not change the fact that they don't fit my definition of woman.

Why does the line stop at public spaces (immediate physical appearance) and not private spaces (the bedroom)?

Oh, you're Norwegian American? I just watched a documentary on Norwegian Americans Hearing them sing the Norwegian national anthem was so interesting 15:06 When the old guy speaks the language, it sounds like a TV program from the 1930s

Are you asking if God has its own meta-cognition (i.e. thoughts, feelings and perceptions like a person) or that God is more like a rock (pure being)? Isn't it interesting that in the highest states of consciousness (particularly during seated meditation), you kinda become like a rock? ?

You don't need a perfect definition, nor a consensus. Just find the one that works best for you. That said, when you're interacting in the social world, you're following different rules than those inside your own head. So just like you wouldn't be an asshole to anybody in particular, don't be an asshole to trans people.

@BenG And btw, the reason I don't like the social constructivist definition of woman is because when I say "I'm going to find myself a woman", I don't actually think to myself whether she "inhabits the norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman". It just doesn't occur to me. And if she doesn't like to wear dresses or doesn't have many feminine interests, I don't really care. The things that actually come to mind and that I actually care about is that we can have sex, maybe have children, and that she exudes feminine energy, and "adult human female" is a good enough proxy for that. If I didn't care about those things, I would just get a boyfriend ?

You're referring to one subset of academia. In philosophy and gender theory, you're talking about the "Ameliorative Inquirists" ("let's try to make the category of man/woman as inclusive as possible"), which spawned the self-ID definition. On the contrary, many trans-inclusive philosophers are in fact bio-essentialists, because they've concluded that the AI's mission is untenable while trying to adhere to the standards of analytic philosophy, which again, has to do with things like the circularity of the self-ID definition. That is why I say that your mission is actually not about changing the definitions of words, but instead about changing how words are used socially, because you don't want me to adopt a definition that tells me what the category of man/woman really means (because again, the self-ID definition cannot do that). You really just want me to talk to trans people a certain way, and I'm mostly fine with that.

Yes, but if we were to concede that we want to box something in for the sake of utility (which if you're a pragmatist, is what metaphysics is about in the first place), then you need some other criteria than just parsimony, because the most parsimonious option is actually the least useful option (it refuses to box anything in).

What if physicalism has more explanatory power than traditional idealism? You can argue that it does.

Ok, so we're back to the most parsimonious explanation being equal to no explanation. But again, is that really the best explanation though? I suggest not.

No.

Yes, the utility becomes obvious when you're presented with two very different examples within a simple context like establishing a single causal link. However, the interesting things happen when you have two very similar explanations within a complex context like establishing a metaphysics, and that is what I tried to show with the physicalism vs. traditional idealism example.

Self-ID definition: "a man is somebody who identifies as a man". It doesn't tell you what a man is. It then follows that a trans-man is somebody who transitions to somebody who identifies as a man. It doesn't tell you what a trans-man is.

If you're using the self-ID definition of man/woman, then trans-man doesn't mean anything.

Ok.

Oh, well in that case, if the explanations always have the same explanatory power, then that is a highly idealized interpretation of the razor. In reality, two explanations are virtually never equal in all ways but the amount of assumptions they deploy. That's why I pointed out the trade-off between parsimony and explanatory power when it comes to traditional idealism vs. physicalism.

Ok, so when you say it's the best one, you only mean best with respect to parsimony itself, not any other metric, right? I mean best with respect to the five aforemention epistemic values.

The title came off as dismissive and callous, like he should know better. That is the usual tone when Rupert Spira is mentioned alongside this forum's ideas about God.

Systems thinking, deep ecology and holism being applied in full force on the systems of humanity and nature. What the Game B guys only make animated YouTube videos about, Sadhguru does in real life: Rally For Rivers, Cauvery Calling, Project GreenHands etc. What Green generally only has a partial and intuitive understanding of (the importance of ecology, social inclusion etc.), Yellow manages to articulate and systematize into a coherent framework, and Turquoise manages to apply it in practice to its full extent.

I don't think having sex is an unrealistic hypothetical, but you do you.